California · Nonprofit
DESIGNING JUSTICE DESIGNING SPACES
DESIGNING JUSTICE DESIGNING SPACES (California) receives grants from 33 organizations whose IRS filings report $15,123,469 to it, the largest being Silicon Valley Community Foundation ($3,480,000). 16 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- Revenue FY2024
- $3.2M
- Funders on record
- 33
- Grants received
- $15M
- Net assets
- $3.6M
What Designing Justice Designing Spaces does
Mission
We are an architecture and design firm, real estate development firm, and non-profit working to end mass incarceration. Our mission and vision is to use architecture to address the racism, poverty, and unequal access to resources caused by the criminal legal system itself. Our work counters the traditional adversarial and punitive architecture of justice--courthouses, prisons, and jails--by creating spaces and buildings for restorative justice, community building, and housing for people coming out of incarceration.
As stated on its FY2024 Form 990.
Program
We are an oakland-based architecture and real estate development non-profit working to end mass incarceration through place-based solutions that address its root causes: poverty, racism, unequal access to resources, and the criminal justice system itself. Our work counters the traditional adversarial and punitive architecture of justice--courthouses, prisons, and jails--by creating spaces and buildings for restorative justice, community building, and housing for people coming out of incarceration.our products and services include: (I) full architecture services, where we provide nonprofit service providers, community-based organizations, and local governments with affordable professional full architectural serivces; (ii) the djds institute, which does research & evaluation, concept development, advocacy & communications, toolkit(s), public speaking, concept development projects, and consulting; and (iii) real estate development, including purchasing and redeveloping properties, convening co-developer partnerships that build multi-use resource hubs within commercial projects, feasibility analysis for innovative housing models, and the ownership of real esate as an organization…
$3,140,105 spent$722,913 earned by the program100% of program spending
The program described on its FY2023 Form 990. Program spending in total: $3,140,105.
The organization over time
Each line starts at 100 in 2017, so what you read is the shape rather than the size: 150 means half as much again as 2017, 50 means half. The number beside each label in the key is where it ended. The shaded band is where the middle 50% of its peers' revenue would sit, given their growth.
Balance sheet
Total assets and total liabilities at each year end, in dollars. The largest one-year move in total assets was 2021 to 2022, from $1.9M to $3.1M (+62%).
How it's funded, over time
Each bar is one year's revenue split into where it came from, and every bar is the same height — these are shares, not amounts, so a year that raised twice as much looks the same size. Hover a bar for the split.
Government-grant reliance: 2021 4% · 2024 1%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.
84% of DESIGNING JUSTICE DESIGNING SPACES’s revenue is contributions — about as donation-reliant as the typical peer (93% for the typical peer).
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 4 of the last 8 reported years ran a deficit.
reserve
Leadership and staff
The officers, directors, trustees and key employees listed on each return. Joined and no longer listed compare each filing with the year before, matching people by surname and first initial; a year after a gap, or a roster under three people, has no comparison.
Chief executive
Deanna Van Buren
Co-founder, exec dir, design dir
Board chair
Raphael Sperry
Board president
As listed on its FY2024 Form 990.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 2 funders to 11 funders, grant income rose $420k → $4.2M.
8 of 33 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 40% of grant dollars received. That money is really individual donors directing a sponsor; the institutions to cultivate are the non-DAF funders.
From the IRS filings of DESIGNING JUSTICE DESIGNING SPACES’s funders (the co-funder graph). Top 30 of 33 funders by total. Association, not causation. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How concentrated its funding is
DESIGNING JUSTICE DESIGNING SPACES has a broad base — no single funder exceeds 23% of grant income, and it takes 4 funders to reach half.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 4 funders to its left
43% of the income these shares are computed over arrives through pass-through sponsors or from payers whose filings do not say what kind of payment it is. Concentration is still measured over all of it, because the money is real; what it does not support is a claim about how many institutions have chosen to fund DESIGNING JUSTICE DESIGNING SPACES.
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 95% · 2018 88% · 2019 100% · 2020 40% · 2021 31% · 2022 22% · 2023 74% — diversifying over time.
“Effective funders” = inverse Herfindahl index (1 / Σ shareᵢ²) — the number of equal-sized funders that would give the same concentration. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How long its funders stay
63% of DESIGNING JUSTICE DESIGNING SPACES's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 48% give in more than one year at all.
Share of funders still giving k years after their first recorded grant, pooled across every acquisition cohort. A funder counts as retained in a year only if it made a grant that year. Measured to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving — a funder cannot be counted as lapsed in a year most filers have not reached.
Where its funders are
DESIGNING JUSTICE DESIGNING SPACES draws 84% of its grant income from funders outside California, across 10 states in all.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $6.0M arriving through sponsors registered in 7 states is excluded from the map and the split above: a sponsor holds money on a donor’s behalf, so its registered address would place those dollars somewhere no donor need ever have been. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
Against its field
DESIGNING JUSTICE DESIGNING SPACES has grown faster than half of the 1,337 crime & legal nonprofits its size.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 1,337 crime & legal nonprofits $1M–$10M, FY2024
Government funding DESIGNING JUSTICE DESIGNING SPACES receives
Grants and contracts to this organization from federal (USASpending) and state checkbooks, reconciled to its EIN. $155k on record.
- National Endowment for the Arts$95k
- Smithsonian Institution$60k
Federal grants vs contracts are distinguished; state line items keep their reported category. Matched by name + geography (the BMF), so coverage is partial and precision-first.
Organizations like DESIGNING JUSTICE DESIGNING SPACES
Organizations whose mission and program text most resemble this one, by semantic similarity over every organization in the US filings — the closest peers, and often the clearest route to shared or prospective funders.
In California
Nationally
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
Where the money goes
79% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
66%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Footprint & structure
Files a return copy in 1 state
Part of a family of 1 related entity
- Djds Real Estate Holdings LLC · corp_trust
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for DESIGNING JUSTICE DESIGNING SPACES: IRS status (Business Master File, Publication 78, auto-revocation), the OFAC sanctions lists, the Internal Revenue Bulletin, and California registration, with the Rev. Proc. 2018-32 §8.01 reliance elements stated element by element. Generated from the current files at the moment you download it.
Screens are triage, not determinations; a source that cannot be read reports not screened, never clear. Screen this nonprofit · How the screen works · on the API as GET /api/screening/{ein}?format=pdf
Questions and answers
- Who funds DESIGNING JUSTICE DESIGNING SPACES?
- DESIGNING JUSTICE DESIGNING SPACES (California) receives grants from 33 organizations whose IRS filings report $15,123,469 to it, the largest being Silicon Valley Community Foundation ($3,480,000). 16 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- How many funders does DESIGNING JUSTICE DESIGNING SPACES have?
- IRS filings report 33 organizations giving $15,123,469 in grants to DESIGNING JUSTICE DESIGNING SPACES, 16 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of DESIGNING JUSTICE DESIGNING SPACES?
- Silicon Valley Community Foundation is the largest funder on record, with $3,480,000 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like DESIGNING JUSTICE DESIGNING SPACES find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in California. The funding by cause and by state pages list the largest funders for a given area and how to approach them.
Play a game about who funds Designing Justice Designing Spaces →
These figures are read directly from IRS Form 990 / 990-PF e-file XML: this organization’s own return for FY2024 (financials across 2017–2024), and the filings of 33 funders that report grants to it. “On record” means captured in the filings we have parsed — a funder that does not e-file, or whose grant detail is not itemized, will not appear. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind. Trends on this page end at FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving; later years are shown and marked, and move no figure. Data on this page was exported October 14, 2026. What this page cannot tell you · view filing